


Parallel

by inkandpaperhowl



Category: Steelheart - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Burning, CFSWF, Drowning, F/M, Gun Violence, the Reckoners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4261068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandpaperhowl/pseuds/inkandpaperhowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've been at this a while, trying to find the reality in which she doesn't kill him. (Otherwise known as: Five Times Megan Killed David, and One Time She Didn't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parallel

> 1\. _The First Time_

“Calamity,” he whispered. “ _You’re_ Firefight, aren’t you? You always were.” 

You don’t respond. You’re looking at the guns he’s got trained on you, a handgun, shiny and familiar, and a rifle braced on the opposite hip. The arrangement is familiar, somehow. He’s still talking, he’s figuring you out, you can see his brain ticking through each situation you don’t quite remember as he works out who you really are, and you know you should concentrate on that because it’s dangerous if he knows. You should probably shoot him. 

You remember in a terrifying rush, the knowledge slamming back into you, and you watch it play out in your memory; he’s behind the wheel of a car, Fortuity leaps at him, and you shoot two guns at the same time--his stupid rifle braced against your hip, and your gun in your hand--catching the Epic in the crossfire. 

“Sparks,” you said then, you repeat now, “I can’t believe that actually worked.” 

He’s confused. There’s the expression you needed to see him make. His name clicks, and you say it, relieved. The nagging familiarity fades now that it’s been satisfied. 

“ _David. That’s_ your name. And I find you very aggravating.” He thanks you. Your brow furrows in annoyance. He takes the opportunity to remind you of all the nice things you did, things you dimly recall if you close your eyes and concentrate, things you know will come back to you if you really want them to. You’re not sure you want them to. You were a different person then. 

That was before you died. 

In this version of reality, when he asks you if you’re going to shoot him, you do. 

He figured out your secret. He knows you are Firefight, and you can’t have him spreading that knowledge. You’ve worked so hard to keep _Megan_ and _Firefight_ separate, to not let the power consume you, to stop Firefight from taking over all of you. You cry over his body while gunfire and explosions rip the stadium apart, but you didn’t have a choice. 

You step out of the tunnel, and Steelheart and Prof are still fighting, and you’re not sure why you save him, but you do, pulling realities apart to distract Steelheart, to push Prof out of the way, to let Abraham and Cody bodily drag Prof out of the fray. They escape, and Steelheart rages incoherently, and you fade into the shadows and wonder what the weather’s like in Babilar this time of year. 

Maybe in Babilar, you won’t be Firefight or Megan. Maybe there, you won’t be the girl who killed him because he knew too much. 

(Who are you kidding? You’ll always be the girl who killed him. He hasn’t found a reality yet where you aren’t.)

> 2\. _They Haven’t Perfected the System Yet_

He turns the gun over your shoulder and squeezes off a round, and you feel it jolt and then the cycle is careening over the edge of the ravine, and you feel him fly out of his seat, and turn to see the helicopter behind him, burning as it begins to fall, getting ready to explode. You hit the ground first, then the cycle lands, then him, and you slide with the bike on top of you and everything feels like _ow_. One side of your body goes numb and you think, _This isn’t right_ , and then the copter explodes. 

You flinch as the first wave of heat rolls over you, and you flinch further under the wreck of the bike, grabbing him with your one good hand as he slides past you. You don’t remember his name, but his face looks vaguely familiar. You don’t remember if he’s friend or foe. If he knows about you or doesn’t. There is surprise on his face as he sees you, a sudden flash of a smile of recognition, and then a pleading, desperate look in his eyes.

“Megan?” he says, but that’s all he gets out before the copter finally crashes around you and the fire falls like rain. You press yourself into the ground, willing the fire to pass you, praying the fire will pass you unscathed. The billow of flame erupts over your head and he’s _there_ , crouching over you, his back exposed to the flames as he shields you with his body. You feel him looking at you in pure joy despite the fire searing his skin.

“Okay, we’re going to have to try this again,” he says. You’re too terrified of the fire to respond, and the numbness is fading into real pain, and you have no idea what he’s talking about. There’s a hint of disappointment in his eyes as he realizes that you don’t recognize him, that you never will. “It’s okay,” he whispers, his lips inches from your ear so you can hear him over the roar of the explosion still rioting above you. “I’ll find you again, I promise.”

You don’t get to say anything before the last, worst flames crash down around you and he cries out, still shielding you. The scent of burning flesh is too much for you, and you manage to push him away. The worst of the explosion is over, and you wriggle out from beneath the cycle, not sure if your leg will work or not. You hesitate when you look at his burning body, his eyes still weakly locked on you, one hand still reaching towards yours.

You raise your gun and put him out of his misery.

You limp away from the fire, mostly unscathed. In a month, you don’t remember the boy who saved you. But sometimes, you wake up from dreams you can’t remember, and in the dreams, you love the boy and it hurts that this world no longer boasts his presence. When you wake up, you are crying.

> 3\. _She’s Getting Tired of Killing Him_

Newton has him at sword point, and you’re staring at the confrontation through the cross-hairs of his sniper rifle from two rooftops over and you’re not sure what to do.

You review what you know: that you died (again) in Newcago. That the Reckoners burned your body and left you. That they didn’t care that you were dead. That when you’d reappeared, they tried to kill you again. That he’d felt betrayed by you and that he’d been right.

You also know that you escaped Newcago and Babilar had taken you in like a lost lamb. That your ceaseless running from your past, from your fear, from your powers, from…him…had brought you here, and that Regalia was happy to use you. You know that you are being used.

You know that it was better with the Reckoners. Better with him.

But you also know that it’s so much easier here, so much easier with Regalia. So much easier to use your powers instead of fighting them. It’s easier to rule the world than to live in it.

You’re tired of fighting it.

“Sorry, Knees.”

It took you less than thirty seconds to decide, and you shift your sights, and below you, two rooftops ahead, he swipes at Newton and she ducks and you shoot. You wonder if he feels betrayed again when he sees the blood on his chest is his, not Newton’s, and you know that he’s right again. You put a second bullet in his head.

Newton glares around to see where the shots came from. You raise a hand and she nods in acknowledgement before sprinting across the intervening bridges to your building. As she approaches, you lean against the wall and grip the gun tightly. You hope she can’t tell that if you weren’t leaning against the wall you’d fall over. You hope she can’t tell that your fists are clenched around the barrel to mask the fact that your hands are shaking.

“Good shot,” Newton says, and you nod. “Good thing you didn’t aim for me, or it would have ricocheted. Don’t know who that would have hit.” You nod again, not trusting yourself to speak. She looks at you quizzically, and you smile, gathering yourself.

“How do you know I wasn’t aiming for you and you didn’t redirect it into that annoying gnat?” She blinks, but then lets out a bark of laughter when she realizes you’re probably joking. You smile again, and some of your shaking eases.

“Lets get back to base,” Newton says. “We can tell the boss that we got another Reckoner. That’ll brighten her day.”

You pick up the gun and follow her across the maze of bridges. Newton asks you if you’re going to keep the gun.

“Of course,” you say, scoffing. “It’s a really well-made gun, bursting with cutting edge technology. I’m not going to just chuck it into the depths.” She shrugs. You don’t tell her that you can’t get rid of it, that you can barely take your hands off it. You can’t tell her that it’s _his_ gun, and now that you’ve killed him, it’s all you have left of him.

You can’t tell her that even though you’re tired of fighting, part of you still wants to hold on. It might be easier to rule the world than to live in it, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it.

That doesn’t mean you have to like yourself.

> 4\. _He’s Getting Tired of Dying_

Obliteration dumps him over the side of the building and you know he won’t make it. There’s a nagging voice in your brain telling you he doesn’t know how to swim, and even if he did, Obliteration chained a cannonball to his ankle. You know that he’s going to sink down and down and down and there’s nothing he can do about it.

You hesitate. The part of you full of the nagging reminders about his inability to swim is now urging you to save him. You’ve never been afraid of the water, but after this, if he lives, he will be. He will fear drowning the way you fear burning and you don’t want him to go through that, but it’s better than dying. You want to dive in and rip the chain from his leg and drag him to the surface. You want to save him, and it’s a weird feeling for you, because you’re really not sure why.

He doesn’t mean anything to you. You’ve never seen him before in this life.

 _Okay, but he’s dying_ , you think. And Obliteration is gone. Long gone. And you know that Regalia isn’t looking in this direction. She won’t know it was you who saved him.

You dive in. 

You dive deeper.

You find him scrabbling at the chain with weak, inefficient fingers, his other hand clawing at the murky depths around him, trying to grab at the retreating surface. You unhook the chain from his leg and grab the back of his shirt. He goes limp in your grip as you tow him upward.  

It’s your turn to claw upward. He sunk further than you thought. You’re deeper than you planned and you’re not strong enough. You glance down at him, but he’s dead weight at this point. Unconscious. Out of air. You waited too long. If you wait much longer, you’ll join him.

You let go.

He drifts away from you and you strike upward, your lungs burning. With both hands free and relieved of his weight, you breach the surface easily, gasping for air. You hesitate a second, then suck in another breath and sink underwater again, squinting though the dimly lit depths as if you’ll see him.

He’s drifted too far away, sunk too low, and you can’t stay down here much longer. You pull yourself out into the nearest building, flopping gracelessly to the floor under the glowing trees. You curse yourself for hesitating too long before diving after him. You curse yourself for not being strong enough to carry him up.

You let the tears fall, because you let him go. You let him drown. You let him drift away into the deep, unfathomable deeps of flooded Babylon Restored. _You_ let go.

For some reason, this hits you harder than you’re used to, and you walk around in a haze the next few days. You sneak away to the lower level jungles and you’re not ashamed when you cry. You should have saved him.

You get the feeling that he would have saved you.

> 5\. _They’ve Been At This A While_

He skids around the corner, out of breath, heart racing, and your gun comes up in a second to arrest his forward momentum. He goes cross eyed looking at the barrel pointed at his nose. You smirk.

“Who are you?” you ask, your voice harsher than you mean. You bring your other hand up to steady the gun. Two streets over, a building explodes. 

“You blew up the theater?” he asks, incredulous. “I thought the Reckoners didn’t kill innocent bystanders.” 

For a second, you’re stunned, and more than a little impressed that he knows. It’s not a good thing he knows, of course, but still–he must have done an impressive amount of research to figure it out. 

“How do you know we’re the Reckoners?”

“You’re hunting Epics, who else would you be?”

Abraham is shouting in your ear, and there are a few more explosions. You’re running out of time, and he’s smiling, and his eyes are roving downwards.

“My gun is up here,” you say coolly, resisting the urge to tug up the low neckline of your incredibly red dress. He smiles and it’s an old, familiar smile, and your eyes narrow because you’re suspicious that maybe he’s done this before.

“On your knees, hands on your head,” you say, and he grins a shit eating grin as he complies, interlocking his fingers behind his head.

“Every time,” he mutters underneath his breath, and you poke him with the barrel of your gun, just to make him worry a bit. The smile slides off his face.

You hear noise down the alley, and Abraham’s voice buzzes in your ear again, and you swear because you know you’ve missed your cue and the mark is getting away. He’s watching you, and you think fast. You make up a name, and bring your hand to your ear, slipping your earpiece to an unused channel so you can relay fake orders without confusing the rest of the team.

“Hardman, cover this idiot,” you say into your useless earbud, watching him as his eyes go wide for a second, as if he’s remembering something. “If Knees here so much as _sneezes_ , put a round in his head.” He looks at you and you can’t help noticing that he looks a little too comfortable with this arrangement.

“Stay there, Knees.” The nickname flows off your tongue as if you’ve used it for him a thousand times. A shiver of deja vu runs down your spine.

He smiles.

He _laughs_.

“You haven’t called me that in ages.”

You frown.

He knows that your sniper isn’t real, and he knows you’re a Reckoner, and he knows the plan, and here he is, _laughing_ , because he thinks you won’t kill him. He thinks you’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He thinks you believe him when he says he’s here to help. Part of you does believe him, but you hesitate, because you know how dangerous he must be. He figured out you were the Reckoners, after all, knew who you were going to hit, and when. And it’s dangerous to leave a guy with that many brains in his head alive.

And he called your bluff, so you have no way of keeping him out of the way.

The part of you that had decided he wasn’t a threat reconsiders, and your finger moves almost before your brain catches up. The bullet slams through his head, and you apologize uselessly as you dive down the alley toward where you’re supposed to be, apologizing again as you switch your com back on and the team berates you.

You finish the job. 

(It’s a little more difficult without his car driving stunts, but you manage it.)

A week later, you’re on the road to anywhere else, watching Newcago fade into the rear-view mirror, and you’re bitter about killing him. What if he really was there to help? You know you didn’t have much of a choice, and hey, Fortuity is dead, but so is a boy who you kind of didn’t mind having look at you in the incredibly red dress, a boy whose laugh made your heart skip a beat, a boy who you called Knees like it meant something.

You turn away from the team when a tear slides down your cheek, because, damnit, Knees _meant_ something and you wish you could remember what that was.

> 6\. _They Figure It Out_

You appear in the sky in a burst of brilliant white light, and you’re angry but it’s not the same anger that you’re used to feeling when you come back from the dead. That anger is an irritation, an itch you can’t scratch, a constant annoyance. That anger is born out of fear and uncertainty and pain. This anger is warmer; it’s a tongue of flame in your chest roaring to escape, a sword of power in your hand, a shield of calm against a storm. This anger is new, and you’re not sure what it is yet, but you aren’t afraid. For the first time in your life, you aren’t afraid. 

This anger is protection. And this time, you save him. 

You collapse onto the roof below you, and he catches you, and there’s a stunned look of awe on his face, mingled with something that looks like joy, but better. You smile weakly at him, and you are very glad his arms are around you. 

“I don’t feel like killing you,” you say quietly, and the thing that looks better than joy consumes his whole frame. 

“More wonderful words have never been spoken,” he says, and his relief is palpable. 

You admit to loving him. You do it indirectly, and you’re not sure he really registers it, but you know he’ll parse your phrasing later, put two and two together, and he’ll gape at you with that stupid expression with his jaw on the floor and he’ll stutter. 

He’ll make a really terrible metaphor.

And you won’t kill him. 

Probably. 

.


End file.
